Ordinary Time 
Pause
There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved, for the sake of something greater.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through pain, and the work of every day, the slow walk toward a better life.
Veronica Roth in Allegiant (2013)
Listen
Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the proof of what we don’t see. The elders in the past were approved because they showed faith.
By faith we understand that the universe has been created by a word from God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance. He went out without knowing where he was going.
By faith he lived in the land he had been promised as a stranger. He lived in tents along with Isaac and Jacob, who were coheirs of the same promise. He was looking forward to a city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-10
Think
Faith is definitely a church-y word. Of course I’ve heard it used outside of church before, like when someone says, “I have faith that you can do it.” But for most of us, when we hear the word faith, we think of having faith in God, or having faith in Jesus. And if someone were to ask us what it means to “have faith,” most of us would say something about believing in God or Jesus, as if faith and belief are the same thing.
But the author of Hebrews invites us to think of faith as something more than just belief. Abraham didn’t just believe in God; Abraham “set out, not knowing where he was going.” That’s what it always feels like when one obeys God and decides to follow Jesus.
Being a person of faith isn’t easy. It means giving one’s whole self to further realizing God’s dream of a more beautiful, just, and equitable world. May we have enough courage to display that kind of faith.
Chris Robertson
Pray
God, you have called the Body of Christ, your church, to be full of faith and to witness to your presence in the world. As a member of that Body, help me to imagine the kind of world you want to create, and give me everything I need to be your hands and feet, that I might walk by faith wherever I go. Amen.
Go
In Scripture we are told that God is at work in the world.
And that God’s work is also our work.
May we then go into the world and be brave,
ever ready to give of ourselves,
ever trusting in the goodness of God.
